Four major US tech firms have committed to investing in UK data centres, fuelling Britain’s economic growth and spurring AI development.
The investments, announced as part of today’s International Investment Summit, will take the total investment in UK data centres to over £25bn since this government took office, demonstrating the government’s continuous effort to drive growth by partnering with businesses.
The ‘vote of confidence’ in Britain was made by US firms CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ and CoreWeave, who announced that the UK would be the home of their new data infrastructure.
Advancing AI development and storage
These new data centres will provide the UK with more computing power and data storage, providing the necessary infrastructure to train and deploy the next generation of AI technologies, such as complex machine learning models and algorithms.
This will also help the UK roll out AI faster in areas like healthcare, which will help everyone live better and healthier lives.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle explained: “Tech leaders from all over the world are seeing Britain as the best place to invest with a thriving and stable market for data centres and AI development.
“Data centres power our day-to-day lives and boost innovation in growing sectors like AI.
“This is why only last month, I took steps to class UK data centres as Critical National Infrastructure, giving the industry the ultimate reassurance that the UK will always be a safe home for investment.”
Rolling out new UK data centres
It comes as Washington DC-headquartered firm CloudHQ is set to develop a new £1.9bn data centre campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
The hyper-scale data centre is currently in development and will help meet the UK’s growing demand for AI and machine learning. It will create 1,500 jobs during construction and 100 permanent jobs once fully operational.
Hossein Fateh, CloudHQ’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are very excited to deliver a hyper-scale campus in the UK that is truly an extension of Slough due to our private diverse fibre optic route.
“Our site enables us to build out our campus environment to provide scale and density to meet our customers’ requirements.”
Global AI platform and software leader ServiceNow also confirmed its commitment to the UK market, with plans to invest £1.15bn in UK data centres over the next five years.
The investment will not only support the future development of AI in the UK, expanding its data centres with Nvidia GPUs for local processing data but also support new office space as the company significantly grows into an employee base beyond its current headcount of 1,000 employees.
Capitalising on emerging growth sectors
Ministers and business leaders will discuss how the UK can capitalise on emerging growth sectors, including health tech and AI, clean energy, and creative industries, at this week’s International Investment Summit.
Additionally, the Prime Minister will participate in an ‘in conversation’ event with former Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt and GSK CEO Dame Emma Walmsley to discuss how the UK can seize the opportunities of AI to drive growth and productivity and its potential to improve public services such as health and education.
Tech Secretary Peter Kyle will take part in a conversation about accelerating innovation as well as sign a memorandum of understanding with Elderberry, the world’s largest pharmaceutical firm, which sets the stage for a world-first trial of obesity medications on the NHS in Greater Manchester.